This 2009 is revealing itself to be an interesting year for me, the 50th anniversary of the death of Heitor Villa-Lobos.

He’s a composer that I’ve loved forever, and which I had dreamed as a boy of recording his complete works for guitar – I had also performed it in Rio in 1987 -; then this dream seemed like one of those destined to stay in the drawer… and instead at the end of 2007 – never say never! – I was given the proposal (the program of Villa-Lobos was chosen from two that I had sent…maybe I hadn’t believed in it much by that time…): recording the complete works within the very prestigious series, “Spirito Gentil”, come with this cd to number 47 (and among previous cds there are musicians like David Oistrackh, Clara Haskil, Arthur Grumiaux, Sviatoslav Richter, Riccardo Muti …and no cd dedicated to the guitar): evidently the cd of my life, recorded in the summer of 2008 with the “Falcon Valley Studios” of Paul Manners, in the middle of the hills of Romagna, and published in November by a prestigious label like Universal.

Following the publication of the cd, a nourishing series of presentation concerts (Bari, Bologna, Cesena, Rimini – already done, in preparation: Pesaro, Milano, Ravenna, Faenza, Ferrara, Genova, S. Margherita Ligure, one in Spain and still others still to be defined in this 2009) and a monthly course on the guitar works of Villa-Lobos that I hold in Faenza at the Scuola Grande San Filippo, directed by Romano Valentini; the course began in December 2008 and will be concluded in June.

This whirlwind of activity is interesting for me on many levels.

It was important to verify in the field like, also today, the music of Villa-Lobos “holds”, both for an audience of outsiders as well as the specialists. The cd had, as well, beautiful comments from important critics like Fernando Battaglia and Piero Mioli and by Marcelo Rodolfo of the Museu Villa-Lobos, let alone Emilia Segovia. At the crowded concerts tin which many “normal” people took part, I find how the communicative power of Villa-Lobos reaches everyone, even when the language gets a little “hard” like in certain etudes – 4, 10, 12. Maybe it is precisely the most difficult etudes that lead to the expressive “punch” that this great music gives to the listener; while those apparently disengaged like those juvenile ones of the “Suite” acquire an unexpected expressive depth, at least for me – not to mention the extraordinary “Valse – Choro” recently discovered and published by Zigante in his extremely valuable critical edition of the works of Villa-Lobos, that I used much in the preparation for the cd.

There, I could say that the awareness heightened in me from these recent occasions, that the music of Villa – Lobos is and remains one of the most important resources of the guitarist’s repertoire. One is accompanied and motivated with an experience that I am having in these months: and then noticing how it’s possible to go on, I would say indefinitely, to delve into this music so apparently “already known” to discover and translate more and more new expressive possibilities.

I have been incited, for example, to read from the cd booklet what is said about Prelude 1 when the expression “A string that sings” is used – certainly a valid expression for Prelude 4 as well, with that central “cantabile” so often misunderstood – and I very much agree with the letter that Mauro Storti writes about it.

But what does it mean then, or how far can we go to make the string “sing” (which seems in itself a contradiction of terms, thinking about the type of sound a plucked string emits)? Of course, we know that it’s important to “sing” these melodic phrases on the guitar, but where can we arrive – to what point does Villa-Lobos push us to reach? And how far can the “little pieces of song” be discovered even in situations where this is less evident, maybe in the little half-step descents in which the guitar music of Villa-Lobos (another recent discovery) is so rich, and maybe in secondary parts – because here there is a lot of counterpoint (not too cerebral, but it’s there)? How far can we dig, define and “push” this cantabile aspect, maybe through new fingering solutions (for example, try taking the second high E from the Mazurka-Choro, against all the good rules of fingering, with the first finger of the left hand to then slide down making a small glissando towards the F, a seventh down…probably Villa-Lobos hadn’t thought of it at the moment of writing the piece, and besides, the idea came to me in the past few months, after 20 years of playing the Mazurka-Choro and after having made the recording, too bad…)? And continuing to practice in these months, it’s as if everything was a flourishing of new ideas. Ideas that I then sift through, keeping some, leaving others, continuing to look for and verify the solutions that this burst of concerts…even some students from the course surprised me thinking of some new ideas, and one that I’ve also started using, naming it the “portamento-Lidia”, from the name of the student that had the idea…Yes, because at the course there’s more or less the same surprise: seven meetings, 14 days in all, spent playing the same pieces by Villa-Lobos…won’t it be tiring? After a little while won’t we find ourselves without much to talk about? And actually no, until now this continuous digging has been the most interesting thing for me, and I go every month to Faenza curious to discover something new, possibly in talking to the students in class…

Another thing, and then I’ll stop: the continuous discovery of the brilliance of the composer in making “perfect” instrumental solutions coincide with the “disinterested” musical thought, as Segovia would say that used just this word in the foreword to the Douze Etudes; I say sometimes in class a little jokingly that maybe, if this music were a bit tougher, a little less “under the fingers”, we would notice much more how much compositional thought is underneath …that the composer also managed, without compromises with the musical thought, to translate it into such idiomatic terms, should by appreciated by guitarists as an extra grace…too much grace, as I was saying, and the guitarist, anxious to stun the audience with other special effects, sometimes turns the more ingenious and profound pages pregnant with meaning. Or maybe he keeps playing these pieces, but simply “playing” with those chordal positions that go up and down the fingerboard, without listening to the notes anymore (but they are all thought out, “wanted”, even if you find them there, under your fingers) or those “easy” melodies… Besides, how many pianists treat Chopin badly?

It’s not that Villa-Lobos is easy, even technically; but it’s just for that illusive invitation that is contained in his music to “go beyond”, to dig, to transfigure the technique even to render the depth of that beating “heart” – that heart that, he said himself, is the “metronome of life”, that heart that, if it were listened to, would let us live better, less “descompassados”…